Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Isn't there already conduit in these cities to put the fibre in? In my part of the UK the existing phone lines run in conduits underground and you can add a new line in there fairly easily. If they don't have conduit I wonder if they could run the line in the sewers, which already run to most houses and are large?

View on HN

The only reason Google tried the nanotrenching is because AT&T fought them tooth and nail on using the telephone polls.

There was no dispute about Google’s right to use the telephone poles. It was about an ordinance the city passed that allowed Google’s contractors to relocate AT&T’s equipment, instead of giving AT&T a chance to do the relocation itself. (The same contractors responsible for tearing up Louisville streets: http://wdrb.images.worldnow.com/images/17611056_G.jpeg) Also, the lawsuit was resolved just four months after Google selected Louisville as a Fiber City, two months before Google started nano-trenching, and 18 months before Google gave up after having covered just a few neighborhoods.

Why were poles the only other option? What about conduit underground?

Among other reasons, the city is in the heart of karst country [0], which is to say that most of the deep rock under it is water-soluble Limestone. Everything dug below the city needs to be carefully managed to avoid cave-ins, sinkholes, water problems, etc.

(This geographical topology is also why for instance Mammoth Cave National Park is nearby, and has one of the largest known and explored cave systems in North America.)

The city has a very robust utility pole grid and almost all of its infrastructure has always been on utility poles.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karst

ETA: Which is also to say that utility poles were not just the only other option, they were the only sustainable option period in this city, with this climate, and this geography. Google knew that going in to the project and still decided to try something different that history should have convinced them was doomed to fail.

Google specifically wanted to try a technology called nanotrenching. They just dig 5cm. It didn’t work because it serms any road engineer knows the seal won’t hold, and cars will wreck the cables very fast.

https://www.techrepublic.com/google-amp/pictures/photos-how-...

They did the microtrenching for my neighborhood in Provo and it seems to be working alright. One difference in my location from what the linked pictures show is that they put the trench right between the the asphalt and the cement of the curb. They also used a small conduit to house the fiber. We’ll see what a few more years brings, but so far so good.

You'd think they could test that on a limited scale before rolling it out in an entire city.

When you're Google, a city is a limited scale.

In general, no. In a lot of the established USA, all lines were run overhead on poles. New neighborhoods are typically now built with underground everything, but that's here nor there. The densely populated parts of Louisville where Google was attempting are all overhead phone/power/cable. Going underground would have been prohibitively expensive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com